Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to begin bringing more traffic is post new content consistently!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you what makes an expertly configured site different. You will also learn what kind of work is required to make sure that when all is fully set up and configured, you will get visitors automatically whenever you publish new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and businesses are looking for any and every advantage available to improve their performance and results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over other competitors. For business owners, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s a simple way to understand the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was running smoothly in the gizmo factory when suddenly, things came to a halt.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the control box. After staring at the wiring board for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a little hammer from his utility belt and made a very gentle tap about 1 cm from the left-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything started working once again.
The manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a request of payment for services for the amount of $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to be compensated fairly for spending years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website fully configured so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up and activate to get desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that processes will work to plan, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing a piece of software, configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components including your web hosting server, your web site, and various external sites and/or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your site can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites and online services.
Third-Party Sites
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content is posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your configuration, content pointing back to your site is automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business receives additional exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the external web properties and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site details, visitor tracking information can be added to WordPress using a plugin and instantly fed to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account, you can use this information with traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress provides users with a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social accounts in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profile pages with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
Configuring WordPress For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services section whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your content, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, go here: Changing Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is safe from being attacked.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, classify and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their social networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website using WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins let you choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your settings and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic – Additional Configuration Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories And Tags
Post tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Phases.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide users with a logical map of how your content is structured, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget This!
When online visitors enter the wrong web address or click on an invalid link, they will typically be greeted with an error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do is publish great content regularly to generate web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress website and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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